Further Reading

Thursday, 22 October 2020

The Rise Of The Cyborgian Consumer

[Waking Times]: The Posthuman (or Transhuman) Movement was formally established in California in the early 1980s. A central figure within the movement, Nick Bostrom, declared that Posthumanism holds to the belief that human nature is an improvable structure, and all its capacities can be enhanced through the use of ‘applied science’. 

The proposition is that human beings should use technology to transcend the limits of body and mind. 

Posthumanists do not see humanity as isolated physical entities but as distributed processes within a system. ‘THE BODY IS OBSOLETE’ is their battle cry, but the Posthuman seems to be defined by a lack of definition.

Stephen Brown, the doyen of marketing and interpretive consumer research, introduced the term apophasis. This is a curious choice of word, as it is a theological term which refers to knowing God through negation, or what God is not. Apophasis is from the ancient Greek, meaning to deny or negate. 

The problem seems to be that we can happily describe what a human being does or performs, but there is a difficulty when it comes to describing what a human being is. This lays bare the profound incapacity of language to penetrate into the very essence of things. In other words, to fully express Being, (I bet humpback whales don’t have this problem)....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...